00:00It was a strong earning, so maybe we need to talk about the elephant in the room.
00:03Shares are down 8%.
00:04I can only imagine it's AI anxiety that seems to continue to be souring a lot of companies
00:11so far in the market these past couple weeks.
00:13What is your response to concerns that AI is going to disrupt booking?
00:19Well, first, thanks for having me.
00:21And I got to echo what you said.
00:23I mean, last night coming out with the numbers that we put out were just stellar.
00:26The whole year has been, even though the world's been volatile and we've had all these economic issues,
00:33we still power through accelerating each quarter.
00:36I'm being able to come in, almost adjusted EBITDA, almost $10 billion,
00:42returning over $8 billion to the shareholders.
00:45This is just fantastic, going well.
00:47And it's interesting, too.
00:49It's not like the world changed anything from what we said last night
00:52that would cause people to be more concerned about AI affecting our business.
00:56In fact, AI is a positive for our business.
00:58That's what's so interesting.
01:00And I'm not sure anything I said that would have caused anybody to think anything different.
01:04But clearly, it's going to take some time for this all to shake out
01:08and the people see the benefits that we are producing through AI.
01:12Well, let's get to it, because the criticism maybe goes,
01:15I can open up my Gemini or ChatGPT or whatever and have it booked for me at some point,
01:21you know, my entire trip, a hotel, a flight, and cars.
01:24So why would I need booking holdings in any of the companies under your umbrella, Glenn?
01:28What would be your response to that?
01:31Well, we don't have the time to go through all the reasons,
01:33and there are a lot why that is not the way the world is going to be.
01:38But I will say that here's an example of a path in the past where people have tried that.
01:43Look at Google.
01:44Enormous company.
01:46Very big at the top of the travel funnel.
01:48People are going to Google first, trying to figure out what they wanted.
01:51And Google tried.
01:52They actually did do this thing called Book on Google.
01:55And then they pulled back from that.
01:57Why?
01:57Because this business is a lot more complex than one would think.
02:01I mean, the supplier proposition that we deal with, we deal with over 4 million properties globally.
02:06And it's not all they just put in the prices and the availability of.
02:11This is some of the connectivity you've got to work with day by day.
02:14And it's working with these managers of these properties in terms of what should they be putting out in terms
02:20of sales,
02:20in terms of geo prices, mobile prices.
02:23We have our loyalty program, Genius.
02:25I mean, we talked last night about mid-60% of the people are coming to us direct.
02:30And we have those AI tools, and we're making it even better.
02:34So you can do your entire trip.
02:36It's not just the hotel.
02:37It's the flight.
02:38It's the ground transportation.
02:39It's attractions, what you do.
02:41Putting that all together, stitching together with AI produces a much better thing.
02:46And then the customer service and the trust that will actually be done right.
02:49That's really complicated stuff that we do so well.
02:52And by the way, you tell me Gemini or Chai TVT are going to do this.
02:56Well, have fun with the merchant of record issues and regulations.
03:00I mean, if you go to Europe, all the issues you have to deal with in terms of making sure
03:04you're doing this within the regulatory framework.
03:06I do not believe that the tech companies, and this is proof by Google, when they see how difficult it
03:13is, how much you need boots on the ground, they'll say, you know, we can make a lot more money
03:18on advertising, which is what Google does.
03:20And together, we made a lot of money.
03:22Now we're doing it with Chai TVT, where we are one of the first people in.
03:27We're putting in advertisements at the bottom of the results that come out of Chai TVT.
03:32Perhaps they will move into more a Google way in terms of using an auction method for advertisers, which would
03:38be wonderful for us and good for them.
03:40We'll see what happens.
03:41But the idea that people are going to be going to a large language model and doing their booking and
03:46it's all going to work fine and no problems, I do not believe that's the way the world's going to
03:51work.
03:51Glenn, I got to say, I really do feel for you.
03:54I mean, it's a lot of CEOs in your position that are having to deal with this, that a market
03:58that's just like throwing everything out with the bathwater because they don't know how things are going to look.
04:03I'm curious from your end, what has it been like to onboard, to hire, to find AI talent that can
04:09guide booking into this next era?
04:11Because all of this feels relatively new.
04:14How difficult or maybe easy is it to get a handle of how you reshape booking to incorporate some of
04:21these AI tools?
04:23Yeah, so I've been in the company now 26 years.
04:26This is my 10th year as CEO.
04:28And yeah, look, technology has been changing over these, you know, quarter of a century and trying to get the
04:34right people, the good talent to be able to do that.
04:36That's been done for a quarter of a century, been doing that.
04:39It's no different now than it was in the past.
04:41And by the way, we started with AI more than a dozen years ago.
04:44Machine learning models that were being used to make sure you saw the best properties, that's AI.
04:50And now generative, yeah, sure.
04:53It's, you know, you've got to find the right people.
04:54But I'll tell you, we're not researchers doing the top end.
04:58And we're certainly not spending hundreds of billions of dollars to build out new models like some of the frontier
05:04players are.
05:05We're using those models.
05:07That doesn't require quite the same talent that are using and trying to come out with these new wonderful models.
05:14Glenn, if I can just jump in because we're running out of time and I don't want to only ask
05:17you about AI.
05:17I want to ask you about other things, too.
05:19How is your customer right now?
05:21What is the strength?
05:22What is the willingness of people not just to book vacations and book all the things that go with it,
05:26but also spend on those?
05:29Yeah, no.
05:30Well, people want to spend, and certainly the higher ends of the economic strata, people are definitely spending, you know,
05:36that's in our numbers.
05:37So we came out with what we, the guidance that looks good.
05:40And we definitely see, assuming there are no macro events that happen, we assume that people are going to continue
05:46to do what they did in 2025, which is help explore the world.
05:50That's our mission, make it easier for everybody to experience the world.
05:53And I'll tell you, it's a wonderful time right now for travel because it's not only the excitement of going
05:58out, but using AI and all these new technologies.
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